There are many different text encoding systems (ways of representing characters within a file) and a file doesn't necessarily carry information about the encoding that was used when it was saved. This can lead to frustrating problems when the file is opened.

Peep is a file viewing and text encoding utility which is useful when programming, when experiencing text encoding problems or when you need to extract information from a file that you can't open otherwise.

Allows you to view files in a 'hexeditor' style, it's not intended to be an editor but rather to inspect, access or sort out encoding problems.